Social nets: the new marketing tool

Saw this story today about how consumer products leviathan Procter & Gamble is now moving into social networking as a way of getting to know its target customers better. The new site, Capessa, has been developed with Yahoo, which plays host to it. It is a sort of ivillage-type of portal, offering all sorts of advice for ladees and offers areas for them to share their own experiences.

It's quite amazing that the site, which has had little promotion up to now, has already quite a readership built up on its open space blogs. A testament to how strong their presence already is on the web.

Because of its size, P&G has long been viewed as a bellwether for how all large companies will behave in terms of advertising budgets. One of its first forays into mass media product advertising was the sponsorship of radio and television series, which were, as a result of P&G's involvement, named soap operas.

Of course, this is not the first example of a company trying to find new ways of using new media to sell more products, but P&G's involvement in this particular project is a sign that there may be many more dollars thrown onto the web in the months to come.

BTW P&G claims that it's not using this as a place to promote its own products, which range from drugs to cleaners to snacks (yes, I guess there's an overlap there), but in fact there are ads on the site.